Free Gangland Robbers by James Morton

he had been entitled to do—and then, after sending the remainder to Ryan’s girlfriend, Mrs Edith Kelly in Adelaide, decamped to Tasmania. When Ryan, who had gone to Melbourne disguised as a woman to collect his share, found out what had happened, he told Kelly. The sound of reward money ringing in her ears, she went to the police.
    Ryan was in bed with her in Richardson Street, Albert Park, when the police arrived. They found £300 in a glass jar stuffed into thechimney, all that was ever recovered from him. Ryan was sent back to Sydney, where he was charged, along with Freeman, Twiss and Tatham. The quartet went on trial at the Central Criminal Court, Darlinghurst, in September that year, with mixed results. Twiss was acquitted and Tatham received a mere three months for being an accessory.
    Ryan’s case was hopeless. Falkiner had been retrieved from Tasmania and gave evidence against him, as did Mrs Kelly, despite her saying she still loved Ryan. She was a woman who certainly had a complicated love life: she was married with children, claimed to love Ryan, and lived with a third man, who came to court to watch the entertainment. Did she still love Ryan? Yes. Had she arranged his defence? Yes. Why was she giving evidence against him? It seemed the right thing to do. And no, there was no question of trying to get him to confess so that she could have a share in the reward money.
    Ryan claimed the reason he had left Sydney was because he had seen a drawing in the newspaper of one of the robbers that resembled him and, because of his criminal record, he knew no one would believe he was innocent. Totally unable to explain away the money in the chimney, as well as the evidence of an informant and the fact he had admitted to the crime on his arrest, he was right.
    Jewey Freeman’s alibi changed slightly, principally because the races were not run in the morning. He said he had been in bed with Kate Leigh, who was called to give evidence and confirmed it. In fact, they had gone ice-skating together at the Exhibition rink, and then gone back to Frog Hollow in Surry Hills, where they had been living in connubial bliss for two days. As
Truth
pointed out, many years later:
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    Her admission, made in public and on oath, a woman’s confession of her own lack of virtue, would have gone far to swing the scales in favour of Freeman. It seemed unbelievable that a woman would publicly parade her shame unless the facts were correct.
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    Many accounts have Leigh living in a ménage à trois with Freeman and Ryan, but there are other claims that Freeman had no idea who she was when she came to the police station. In those days and, indeed, for some years afterwards, police evidence was not wholly reliable. One officer said that when she came to the lockup, she asked which one of the men was Freeman, while, in turn, Freeman asked, ‘Who’s that ginger cunt?’.
    In any case, the jury did not believe her or Freeman. Both he and Ryan received ten years. For Freeman, this was followed immediately by a life sentence for shooting McHale.
    At first, Ryan and Freeman seemed to take their ten-year sentences well. Saying that he would make a good soldier, Freeman asked to be sent to the Front. Mr Justice Sly appears to have had some admiration for the pair:
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    I believe you are right. Both of you are bold men apparently afraid of nothing and you would make very good soldiers. Still I cannot send you to be a soldier.
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    Freeman asked that one of the arresting officers, Detective Robson, be given his revolver as a souvenir, while Ryan said he wanted his to be given to the war effort. Ryan later told a warder he would see the sentence out in twenty-four hours. The next morning he was found in bed in Parramatta Prison, soaked in blood. He had tried to commit suicide , by cutting his wrists with a piece of tin.
    Freeman was a model prisoner and became something of a forgotten man until, in January 1935, there